Captain Jack's Diary
by Azlira
Summary: An account from Captain Jack's perspective on life and death after losing Ianto.
1. Chapter 1

**My friend and I have been doing a lot of writing centered around Jack's feelings and experiences after CoE... this is going to be a sort of jumbled diary, of what he's thinking and doing while he tries to recover from the blow of losing Ianto. Warning: Angst Prevalent Throughout! Hope you enjoy!**

After all these lives, I have made my decision – death does not become me. This vicious cycle, of feeling pain to feeling emptiness to feeling the stinging spark of life over and over again. It fills me with the most intense guilt, knowing that I will always wake up, that I will always return when the lives of others cease to be more than once. Everyone else around me, no matter how good or how magnificent or how great, will die and not wake up. Their lives will end forever, while I will live on and experience existence forever. I can't help but feel that I do not deserve this ability, that so many others could make better use of it, deserve to have those extra chances at life. I, on the other hand, have not done anything remarkable enough to grant this situation. I feel as if I am taking the lives that could belong to others.

Grief does not become me, either, but it is ever constant in my lives. I live on while all the better people die and cannot return. I feel guilt, sadness, depression, anguish at both my loss and theirs. I have spent lifetimes grieving. I am distraught by all the loss I see. But there is no way to end these occurrences, as they will go on and on for me forever. I am stuck in a loop of angst that tortures me and tears my mind to pieces, and I have no idea how to end it.

My deaths are always the same. No matter what the cause, I slip away. Feelings of cold hopelessness fill me from top to bottom as a noisy darkness surrounds me. I can move around, and see and feel and hear, but it is like I am neither quite here nor there – neither alive nor dead. I don't belong in life or afterlife, and neither place accepts me. It is in the moments after I die that my existence seems the most impossible, for even when I am dead I have no peace. It is not the same for others, those mortals, who only die once. They die, and then have their place in afterlife. It seems to be the same cold, dark place as the afterlife I am always perhaps ninety percent a part of, but for them it is constant, all they will ever have again. But they have something, something that will never be mine.

I can see people who have died in this afterlife, just for the few minutes before I take my next breath and revive, and carry on with my never-ending march. I see people that I've known and loved and lost. I can see him – he who I grieved over for millennia – just before me, almost within my grasp. When I first saw him, I was overcome with emotions. I immediately felt all the grief and anguish I had experienced in the eons since his death, the death I was responsible for, rush back all at once. The memory of his very passing came before me, chiseled into my eyes like words carved into a mountain face. I felt all the guilt that had overcome me, the great tsunamis of depression that had been brought on by his loss, all the sadness that I had experienced since that fateful day. Grief etched itself throughout my body as I remembered. But I also felt the warmth of love, the love that had for so long meant pain, returning when I saw him again. I could feel the sweet breath of love sigh over me as I looked at him anew. I looked at him, and could see the sadness filling his deep gray eyes. I could see the relaxed look on his face, holding an eternal depression in its soft features. I could see the long scar on his right cheek that he had sustained mere days before it happened. That scar would never heal. I reached out silently to touch his face, but I couldn't. I could see him right before me, but he was so far away. I then realized that although he was there, I was not. He was completely dead, encompassed forever by the afterlife. But I was not. I was neither dead nor alive. I belonged nowhere, and thus was never really anywhere. Most importantly, I was not here. I couldn't be. I felt the hope leave me as my eyes filled with tears and my throat grew tight. My chance to be with him again, just for a few minutes, could not even exist. The one bright spot that might have existed in my eternally agonizing existence couldn't be. I could die, but never be dead. I could never be in the afterlife, and could never be with my love again, not even for a minute. The one solace that people find in death could not be for me. I could not be with him, and he could not even see me. I wasn't there to him. For all the grief and hopelessness I found in this situation, it must, for him, have been worse. I was never even there. Eternity now separates us forever.

Living is impossible without hope. I am neither living nor dead, and I have nothing.

**Yep. Angst. I did warn you. Anyway, it's our first multi-chapter story, so if you could leave a review, that would mean the world to us. :) Thanks! **


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks so much to those that favorited, and sorry for the long wait! Alas, I don't own Torchwood. **

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Grief has been my constant for many lifetimes. I have walked the streets of every planet I have found for centuries and swigged down the liquors of a thousand species to make the time pass. I have let my sorrows drown in an ocean of alcohol and tears only to resurface again. My grief always returns.

I have cried more than ever in the past, letting tears slip down my face and pool by my side on the ground's grimy surface. I sit in the shadows and slums of the universe, silent as so many pass by and look on curiously. They must wonder as they walk past. All they see is a mysterious man, a man who is clearly out of place, yet always remains just there. They must see me and not know exactly what to make of me; some of them must wonder what brought me to that particular time and that particular part of the universe. I wouldn't have an answer for them. My existence itself is so random, and my choices even more so. There is no reason for my being there, but there is reason for who I now am. I can't imagine that they can see that reason. Life is so extremely complicated and unique for even the most simple of people that my story is beyond what most people can fathom. When they look at me, they couldn't begin to imagine what led me there.

My grief is still obvious, however. When people look at me, they must see despair filling eyes that are already to the brim with tears. They must see the anguish on my face, and the guilt, the sadness, the broken heart. All these things must be apparent. I imagine that some of them, in those brief few moments when they notice me, must contemplate the life they think I lead as a potential life of their own. They must imagine themselves in my position, as many do when faced with such a contrasting thought to those of their own. They must put themselves in my shoes. I bet they make up backstory, thinking of whatever destruction could lead them to such a stage of grief as mine. Then, what would they do, faced with such a life? Many snap out of the dream at that very moment, rather than contemplate what choice they might make. A select few must not break out at that moment, though, for there are some that continue to stare at me, without a look of scorn or pity, as they pass by me during the night. I think these are the ones that realize the choice that they would make. They would end it. They would choose to end their suffering forever. These are the people that realize that sometimes there can be pain so great that it is worse to feel it than to feel nothing at all.

These are the people that come the closest to understanding my suffering. But even they are nowhere near being able to comprehend it.

I've lost myself in my grief. I cannot even remember what I was like before this, what life was before my loss. I am a changed man, someone who should have never been. My past self would not even recognize who I have become. I am now someone who remains only in the darkest of places. My tears never stop, in perpetual flow from my fading eyes. The pain and grief and suffering within me pull at my body, wrenching it apart from every direction. My depression has filled me, aching in every emotional and physical dimension of my whole. The person who I have become will mourn forever. No amount of tears will ever suffice, and no amount of alcohol will ever drown my sorrows away. I am confined to this pain, the pain of being responsible for the death of the one I loved. No amount of depression will ever be enough to balance out this occurrence in my life. My despair will last forever.

It was out of this utter grief that I tried, just for a moment, to take the advice of the ones who passed by me, those who for a second could contemplate what they would do. I was without hope when I made the unconscious decision. A part of me knew that I would inevitably fail, and that there would never be any release from this pain for me, but I did it anyways. On one late summer night, when the ache of my heart was too great, I took that solemn step, sliding the blade cleanly into my chest. I fell backwards, just for a moment experiencing physical pain that could distract me from my emotional suffering. But then it was all over. The same familiar sights that are unique to my existence came before me, but soon enough I revived, my heart beating quickly and the stained dagger now by my side. I had failed. The last resort for so many people who are out of hope was not a possibility for me. Death could never be a relief from my suffering. Making the typically irreversible choice to take my own life changed nothing. My grief will last forever.

Perhaps it is this destitute hallmark of my existence that makes my pain so great. Knowing that there will never be an end to it makes me immune to all the suggestions of my mind to move on. I know that there will never be a point in time where I am not experiencing these feelings, so it seems silly to make futile attempts to forget. Forgetting would only make my suffering worse, anyways. The only things I can do are feel and remember. My grief is perhaps homage to my love. My life since his death is perhaps the personification of just how much I loved him, and how much suffering my loss has cause me. Feeling all this pain and despair is the only way I can remember him. I'll never be able to be at peace with my memories, for the events of my life are so terrible that it would be out of place to go on without my grief. No matter how destitute it seems, one thing is certain to me – without my grief, I will be without my love.

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**Please review if you enjoyed!**


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